boomershadow wrote:Vorda wrote:boomershadow wrote:
There are a few international Pacers fans that post here on RealGM. And I'm always really interested to hear how they started following the Pacers and what in particular made this small market team appeal to them.
Reggie Miller brought Pacers to me... I allways liked to watch 3-pt shooters... and that's how it all started
My story is similar. When I was young, I always had to defend Reggie Miller and the Pacers against a bunch of lame bandwagon Chicago Bulls fans even right here in Indiana. So it is actually always really awesome to see that the team has some appeal elsewhere.
Well, one time when I was 12 or 13, I was watching an NBA game with my late uncle who was an NBA fan
At that point, I really didn't know too much about the NBA other than it was basketball and Michael Jordan was really good
So he was telling me about all the other great players at that time, Robinson and the Spurs, Olajuwon and the Rockets, Barkley and the Suns, Malone and Stockton and the Jazz, etc
And then he pointed at someone on the TV, "And there's this guy. He's called Reggie Miller"
"And what does he do?"
"Well, he's really good at making 3 pointers"
"I see"
"Especially in tight situations"
And right there and then, as if on cue, boom, Reggie made a buzzer beater. I was hooked - I would start paying attention to the Reggie Miller and the Pacers after that, which wasn't easy before the internet was a thing
It wasn't until they hired Larry Bird as their coach when I thought "oh they're serious now" and started following the team from the beginning of the season
I was in college, and my classmates were all bandwagon Bulls fans, and that was also the season the Bulls were looking for their second three peat though, so the hype was all about that - there was the odd Kevin Garnett fan, but it was mostly about MJ and the Bulls
Anyhow, one day it was Game 6 of the Bull-Pacers playoffs series, and we all went to this place (a cafe of some sort?) that had a big TV to watch the game live
They knew I like the Pacers more than the Bulls, and they were mostly like "but why?"
It's funny how even over here, Pacers were seen by them to be that annoying team that stood in the way
It was a close game, but of course Reggie hit the game winning shot to force game 7 - really gave me the satisfaction of watching them groaning and moaning while I enjoyed the win
